Scottish football historians will know that the youngest ever internationalist was John A Lambie, who made his debut against Ireland in 1886 at the extraordinary age of just 17 years and 92 days. While his record is not under threat, it will surprise many to know that he was not the first 17-year-old to be selected for Scotland. I recently spent a few hours in the library of Glasgow Academy, going through the school registers. Although this is a rugby-playing school, the blurred distinctions between round and oval ball games in the early days of organised football resulted in several Academicals becoming prominent association football players and I have found at least four Scotland internationalists: Frederick Anderson (capped 1874), Alexander McGeoch (1876-77), William Turner (1885-86) and Woodville Gray (1886). Pictured above, Woodville Gray has a fascinating story. Born in 1866, he was the son of William Gray, the proprietor of Gray Dunn & Co, a well-known Glasgow biscuit manufacturer. Their factory at Kinning Park is still a prominent city landmark next to the M8 motorway, although derelict. The Grays were Quakers, and young Woodville was sent to the Bootham School in York, a Quaker establishment, from 1879-82. There he learned to play association football, so when he returned to Glasgow Academy for the final year of his education, 1882-83, he joined Pollokshields Athletic rather than play rugby for the school. He was fast and talented so, despite being just 16 and still at school, in April 1883 he was selected by the Scottish FA for the Glasgow select against Edinburgh. After leaving the Academy that summer, the honours continued and he played again for Glasgow v London (in London) in December 1883, then was named in the Scotland team to face Ireland in Belfast on 26 January 1884. He would have been 17 years and 230 days but 'was compelled to decline the honour' (Scottish Athletic Journal). Gray was named as a reserve for two more internationals (v Wales 1884 and Ireland 1885) before finally winning his solitary cap against England in March 1886, three months before his 20th birthday. Meanwhile, his club career was also interesting. Although he remained with Pollokshields Athletic until the end of the 1880s, he guested for Queen's Park from time to time, winning the Glasgow Merchants' Charity Cup in 1883 (age 16) and 1885. Even more notably, he was brought into the Queen's Park side for the 1885 FA Cup Final against Blackburn Rovers, as a replacement for the injured William Harrower - a perfectly acceptable substitution under the rules of the time. Woodville Gray married Gulielma Payne in 1891, had two sons and two daughters, and moved to Birkenhead where he worked as a printer. He died there in 1938. His elder son, Henry Woodville Gray, signed for Everton in 1919 as an amateur but never made the first team and had to give up the game a couple of years later after a bad injury.

I recently wrote the story of Robert Main Christie, the Dunblane man whose amazing list of sporting achievements included playing for Scotland against England aged 18, scoring a goal in an FA Cup final, winning the Scottish Cup, curling for Scotland, and founding the local golf club. You can read the article, published in the Scotsman, here. It was a timely coincidence that Andy Murray, a major contemporary sporting talent from the town, was showered with awards this week, including freedom of Stirling and an honorary degree. By contrast, Christie's life was all but forgotten and only in death is he commemorated, having been gassed in the final year of the first World War. He was such an interesting man that many details had to be left out of the article, not least that as I write this I can see the schoolhouse where Christie's father was the dominie, next door to the family home where he was brought up. Contemporary accounts describe how Christie and his friends founded a football team in about 1877 aged just 12 or 13, and in time Dunblane FC grew to be a power in Perthshire, winning the county cup eleven times; the story of the team could well be my next big project. He was also very active in curling, a regular player in the local rink and also a vocal critic of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club at their annual meetings. And an enthusiastic golfer, and angler, and billiards player. His death was as horrible as it was tragic. Aged 52, he could probably have stayed at home with his wife and five kids, but spent most of the war in khaki: in France, Greece and back to France. In May 1918, while commanding the 101st Labour Company, he and his troops came under a bombardment of German shells at the little village of Foncquevillers. The high explosives did plenty of damage, but unknown to the men who survived was that other shells contained mustard gas, silent and odourless but utterly deadly: a few hours after exposure the first symptoms began to show, and soon the skin and lungs were covered with burns and ulcers for which there was no treatment, no respite apart from death. Christie died after four days of agony, but I came across others who suffered for weeks, even months, before dying. Some of the memorials to him in Dunblane are pictured below: on the main war memorial, in the cathedral and in the masonic lodge. He was one of over 100 local residents to be killed in the conflict, and they are all commemorated in a fascinating new book by local historian Ed Campbell: Dunblane War Memorial: Remembering Dunblane's Fallen (£12.99, on sale from local shops or Reveille Press).